Note F — ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

Mr. Riethmüller, in his volume on "Hamilton and his Contemporaries," coolly assumes that Hamilton would have opposed the late war for the maintenance of the Union, had he been living! Anything more absurd than such a view of Hamilton's probable course, under circumstances like those which occurred in 1861, it would be impossible to imagine. Hamilton would have been the firmest supporter of the war, had he lived to see it, or had such a war broken out in his time. His principles would have led him to be for extreme measures. It is easy to see why Mr. Riethmüller thus misrepresents Hamilton's opinions. Living in London, where it is thought that every foreign nation should submit to destruction, if that be desirable to England, he wrote under the influence of the place. The English do not take the same view of Secession, when it comes home to them. They think as unfavorably of that repeal of the Union which the Irish demand as we thought of that dissolution of our Union which South Carolinians demanded; and they moved against the Fenians much earlier than we moved against the Carolinians. Mr. Riethmüller's assumption is pointedly disclaimed by General Hamilton's representatives, who declare that it is a palpable misrepresentation of their father's views: and no one who is familiar with Hamilton's writings and history can honestly say that they are wrong. To say that Andrew Jackson, who crushed Nullification, would have been a Secessionist, had he been living in 1861, would be a moderate assertion, compared to that which places Alexander Hamilton in the list of possible Secessionists, had he survived to Secession times.